Saturday, August 30, 2008

I written about this before, but it deserves repeating. A former racing aquaintance of mine once quipped 'the perfect week is one in whic you don't have to start your car'. He was referring to us working stiffs, who use commuting as training. Not the bike bums who live in their parents basement and wrench for a 'living'.

This week was a 'perfect week'. From monday thru friday I logged 160 miles, with a good portion of it at higher intensities. 90 miles were actually commuting with the extra 70 tacked on in two after work rides. I never started my car, and went to work every day.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Yesterday morning I caught two drafts, one was behind an SUV ~ 35 mph for about a minute, and the other was behind a large box truck for about two minutes, but it took me up a hill at 30 mph that I would have had to downshift for. It wasn't especially noteworthy except that it was a Ketel One truck. That was pretty cool.

Tonight, on the way home, I hopped in behind a line of two SUVs and a conservation commission pick-up truck, and rode them for about two miles at 30 mph until they all turned off, one by one.

This past tuesday I went to the Tuesday Night Fights. I wasn't sure how it was going to pan out, so I just sort of sat in for most of it. As we got closer to the end I was feeling good enough to go with an attack on a hill by three other riders. As we crested the hill and started to descend, I decided it was time to do a little work. One of the riders dropped off right away, so the three of us traded good solid pulls, keeping up a steady 25 mph in the flats, putting a good minute on the rest of the riders by the end. Since I hadn't done any real efforts before going with that attack, I pulled the other two up the last hill and through the last two corners, then pulled off to let them fight it out.

Monday, August 25, 2008

First, I just want to say how much fun my MTB circuit is. I put together a sweet course of three legs in the winnekenni castle/millvale reservoir areas of haver. It's 17 miles of shortish steep climbs/descents, windy-twisty-off camber-technical single track, fast swoopy double-track, and a long-baby head-wet atv trail. Thanks to the weather, there are a number of muddy sections, but everything is completely ridable. I can rip it off non-stop in just under two hours, and this past sunday I finally made a rocky climb that's about 100 yards long and about %25 grade for the first time this year.

But this post is really about The Blackout.

If you've every been a dedicated racer and commuter, it's happened to you.

You've been over training, you get on the bike to ride to work one morning, and the next thing you know, you're at work. You try to think back about the ride in, and then it hits you......

There's no data.

Your brain seems to have forgotten to turn on its ride computer.

Now, I haven't exactly been over-training, but I guess this morning I was more tired than I thought. I didn't space the whole ride, though there are chunks missing. I can't remember passing Whirlaway Sports, or the entire Menge' valley section of rte 110.

But tonight, as I'm sitting here being painfully bored by olympic diving, waiting for coverage of track and field, I decided to post the data from a portion of my ride home from work.

I had planned for 30 miles, but at the 9 mile point I was in georgetown center preparing to head west on rte. 97 and came upon a box truck at the light (jct of 97/133).

So I hop in the truck draft and and quickly brought up to 40 mph. As I approached my turn (~1.5 miles later - salem st), I decided to sit in, and ended up riding the draft all the way to the groveland bridge in haverhill (pic is from the floods of '06). I averaged just shy of 40 mph for the leg. I'm glad I have the 11 on the back.

The section of interest is between the 9 and 12 mile marks. The road is very flat, just a few little rises that, even without a draft or tailwind, really don't push your HR much above where you're currently working, so staying in a smooth steady truck draft isn't really difficult. Still, 3 miles at 40 mph in a draft is pretty close to a record. I do remember during a commute to work at MEEI 15 years ago that I drafted a semi-trailer all the way from lexington center to arlington center, though the speed was much slower.

Monday, August 18, 2008

I've been logging into a 'kink & bdsm' discussion forum and the issue of pussy and nipple stretching comes up.

I remember about ten years ago, discovering a body modification maven by the name of O'Pearl and set about surfing for links to post. I end up with three webpages open on my screen, with the google image search and two different pictures.

In walks my boss.

Not my real boss. My real boss is on vacation. This guy is the department #2. He doesn't like me.

Fortunately, I was going to be leaving in 15 minutes, so the issue he wanted to deal with was going to have to wait, but it was like he knew I had shut something down on my screen that shouldn't be there, and he was waiting to bag me.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

This is the second time I've had this dream, The last time was some time ago...months...maybe a year.

I'm at work, in a meeting with marketing people, and the head of the marketing department is a woman. She needs me for some technical advice with a customer, but I'm already behind on my projects in _my_ department. Since she basically outranks my boss, she calls him and tells him I'm going to be busy for a while. This is not a sex dream, and I don't remember if I had sex in the first one, but I have sex with the marketing mistress in this one. Nothing special, just sex. FWIW - this marketing manager bears no resemblance to anyone I know. She just some non-descript, professional woman/mother.

After we're done, we go into another room where there is an actual meeting with other marketing members. Here is where it gets weird: it turns into a "National Treasure" conspiracy theory type of thing, where we have to get to some clandestine underground (literally) passageway and get past some demonic evil trial.

In the first dream, I didn't make it. I don't remember what the trial was, but I remember being burned alive, and waking up.

This dream, I was given a key. As I inserted the key into the passageway door, it was suddenly sucked out, flew back behind me, and into the mouth of an icy ghoul. This is really strange; the ghoul bore a striking resemblance to a coworker of mine. This guy is a nice, friendly, easy going, software engineer. Our paths rarely ever cross, except to see each other at lunch occasionally. His projects and mine are related, but there is no current dependency, so I'm not sure why _he_ showed up as a icy homicidal ghoul.

One of the people in the 'team' toss me a lit molotov cocktail, and I hurl it at the ghoul. The explosion is neutralized by his icy constitution, and he vanishes into a poof. The key ends up on the floor.

I pick up the key, and instantly I am transported to my engineering lab.

I then wake up.

Today I had one of the best moutainbike rides in recent years. I've put together a 17 mile route with singletrack, fast double track, granny gear climbs, and fast descents, in the Winnekenni park and Millvale Reservoir areas of Haverhill. Actually the round trip - including the milage too and from the park - is 21 miles. The 17 miles take just about 2 hours riding non-stop (and I _mean_ non-stop) at a reasonable pace; hitting AT on the climbs and keeping a solid effort in the singletrack and fire roads.

This really had nothing to do with the bad dream, but it did help clear my head.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

I could say I had a strong sense Ms. Armstrong would win the gold in the TT, but no one would believe me. Not that it would have mattered either way, At least the US didn't pull a _complete_ goose egg in the road events.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

so the oympics are on, and so far there have been exactly two bright spots. One was the US win in the 4x100 swimming relay over those arrogant french pukes, and the other was the scope of the opening ceremony....but.....

The americans in road cycling have been a joke. No one even in the top ten in either event? fuuuuuck meeeeeee!!!!!!!

Maybe the US will see some redemption in the road TT. It's not like we don't have a good shot with leipheimer, zabriski, and armstrong.

Then I watched boxing.I saw two very disturbing matches. The two things they had in common were a) a gross mismatch and b) a gross attitude of arrogance on the part of the winners.

Now, Im no boxing expert. I do love the sport, and know a good fight and fighter when I see one, but I couldn't tell you any of the current world champions. I kind of stopped paying attention when it was apparent that don king had ruined the sport, and allowed tyson to become a monster.

Anyway, first I watched Ali Hallab (FRA) vs Akhil Kumar (IND). As much as like to see the french get smacked around, and this one a muslim no less, Kumars taunting antics were beyond the pale of the spirit of sportsmanship I was hoping to see in these games.

Then I watched Yu Gu (CHN) vs Joe Murray (GBR). Again, murray was hopelessly outclassed. Actually neither one of these guys could fight for shit. When I tell you they weren't fighting any better than a couple of skinny hill climbing bike racers, I know what I'm talking about. Gu was so far ahead in the last round, he actually started running _away_ from murray. Really, I'm not kidding. Watch the fight when it gets to youtube.

On the bright side, this kid phelps is looking pretty unstoppable right now, as of this writing he has 4 golds out of a hopeful 8, and I think the us womens gymnastics leotards are just too fucking cute.

Such Silliness

lifeistoofuckeduptotakeseriously

Welcome to the Blog Of Zencycle, the fantastic new super hero of the current economic slump.
Now, some folks say he looked like Rudy Giuliani
Some others say, 'bullshit, man, He's just another greasy guy who happened to be born in the basement of The Captain's Lounge in Revere, right beside the autographed copies of the Kinsey Reports in the bathroom where Paris flushed away her stash but the cops got her anyways'.
Still others say, 'Piss on you, Jack! He's just a crazy Mick who rode a black mountain bike'.
You see, no one really knows for sure
Because
He is so, He is so, he is so!
Mystery-uuuus!
He is so, He is so, he is so!
Mysterious!
Some men say he could ride
Some men say he could swim
Others say he could sing like Freddie Mercury,
And all the girls in Brockton are amazed by him!
Ladies and Gentlemen: THE ZENCYCLING COSMIC PRAYER FOR GUIDANCE featuring Tyler Hamilton, hit it!
“Let me tell you brother, it doesn't mean thing, if you haven't got the ability to SPIN!”
Consider this rumor, published three weeks ago in ROLLING STONE (Oh, it's gotta be true!):
Zencycle can write the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin!
YOU DON'T SAY!?!?
(I'm so hip!)